Daily Report: Google Would Like You to Meet Its Gadgets

Google presented an array of new products, including the Pixel smartphone, in San Francisco on Tuesday.CreditBeck Diefenbach/Reuters

By Jim Kerstetter

Oct. 5, 2016

We present to you Google, the Silicon Valley gadget company.

Google on Tuesday unveiled a long-awaited batch of devices, including a new smartphone, an artificially intelligent home appliance that is the company’s answer to Amazon’s Echo, and virtual reality goggles that are an answer to a whole bunch of companies’ virtual reality goggles.

It may seem odd to see Google — long associated with its search engine, internet tools and mobile operating system — doing its best to put on a gadget fashion show. But an argument can be made that it has no choice.

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The reason? Artificial intelligence. A.I. technology has become the topic du jour in Silicon Valley. And Google has been one of the tech industry’s front-runners in developing A.I., from its experimental, self-driving cars to the improving ability of its search engine to understand what you are looking for on the internet.

Surprisingly, Google hasn’t done such a good job of getting that A.I. into the hands of consumers. Amazon has, through its hardware. Now, A.I. will be fused to an array of Google devices, tying consumers back to the company’s powerful computer network.

Google figures there is plenty of time to catch up, despite the two-year head start it gave the Echo.

It’s a reasonable point. Google, after all, was hardly the first search engine. Facebook was not the first social media service. And the iPhone wasn’t exactly the first smartphone. If you jump into a market late, you just have to do whatever it is an awful lot better than the companies there before you.

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